[The story of oxygen (1)]

The writers, in this first part of the oxygen story, intend availing themselves of a language different from the biochemists' initiatory one in dealing with the physiopathological presuppositions of what can be generically defined as oxygen pathology, and propose it in a guise more legible by clinicians. This, as the "oxygen pathology" in the latest years lost its sectorial nature, whereby it was only matter of resuscitators, accustomed to fight against the syndrome of oxygen toxicity stress, and assumed a new dimension, almost totalizing, being inclusive of the most various situations, although rotating around a sole pin, that is, the cellular injury, either originated from a vascular disconnection and subsequent reperfusion, or finding its initial moment in the shock, in the phlogosis, or in a situation of stress, or finding a regenerative, degenerative, mutagenic cause, etc etc. The role played by many of such conditions in traumatologic surgery represented the element justifying the Authors' interest in this topic, expressly faced in "lay" key, as, almost provocatively, the title intends emphasizing, whereas it suggests the ambiguous aspect of oxygen.